2024 Ford Ranger

95.5-97 was definitely better (I had two 97s ), and that flair tundra was an abomination.

 

I always wondered why someone would need their truck to exude masculine energy? I’d rather lift weights and drive a VW beetle than rely on my truck to make me look tough.

 

I'll strongly consider one next time. My brother has a 2020 Ranger, I have a 2020 Explorer with the same engine/transmission. Compared to Tacoma, the Ranger has 300-400 lbs more payload, 1000 lbs better tow rating, runs faster, has more low end torque, gets better fuel economy and costs less.

They can sell them with a box of tampons and lipstick if they want, but the new Ranger has balls where it counts.

 

When i see new vehicles like this, what stands out to me isnt the specific look of the body.. what stands out is how toyota does everything first and then everybody else follows

 

I remember when Dodge did a re-design in 2002 they made the grille so fat. I thought it was the ugliest thing Id ever seen. It grew on me over time and probably is THE truck that ushered in the behemoth body full size pick-up. I wonder if these will grow on me too. I agree that they look odd now, but I wonder what I'll think in 5 years?

 

@Greene368 feel free to bash that thing all you want. I'm a lifelong Ford guy, owned a 97, 99, and 01 Ranger back in the day and I think the new Ranger in those pix looks like a melted POS.

Throw in that crappy turbo 4 banger and it's something to avoid. It looks like someone took my 97 Ranger and stuck it in a microwave. Then stepped on it.

I was shopping for a full size Bronco recently, they had one with the 4 banger out front. "Want to test drive it?" Hard NO. 4 bangers suck.

 

I'd tend to agree in most cases but my buddy has a full-size Bronco, 2-door with the 4 cylinder engine/manual transmission. It's a perfect pairing for that size of vehicle. Ford also released a factory tune to bump the HP numbers to 330hp/385tq...I'd say that handily beats our 6 bangers, eh?

And can we just talk about the factory performance tune? It's $825, factory performed, and gives you an additional 30hp and 60ft/lb of torque. I've spent WAY more money trying to get 30hp. In fact, most people on this forum have spent more than that on stickers. Good on you, Ford.

 

Yeah, looking at the picture, it reminded of the former Ford Explorer truck.

 

Nope... turned my nose up at it and got a 4 door 2022 with the 2.7l V6.

Area 51, Sasquatch, Ford metal front bumper. Black steelies. No wimp 4 banger for me!!!!

 

Are you referring to the Sport Trac?

 

Yep! Thanks for calling it out

 

Amen, but I feel like I'm coming across as shrill on TW, so maybe I won't say too much this time. I left Lexus Enthusiast forum in July 2020, after 8 1/2 years there, back when it was a small blog and not yet a forum. I work for Ford and my spouse is a T6 engineer, in both Dearborn, Michigan and Campbellfield, Melbourne, Australia. I got the Ford job after we met each other in England over half a decade ago, following my departure from JLR.

And folks, when I referred to partisan discourse in another thread driving me away, it's posts like these that made me leave places like Lexus Enthusiast. A forum full of great young Lexus fanatics and Toyota Motor Company expert insiders, going back to the 2000s in their skillful insight. For me an uncomfortable line was crossed there, which put me in an awkward position and I left that site, to ensure not to make it personal and ruin any existing goodwill. I harbor no ill will now, but I wasn't going to defend my employer in that manner I almost felt forced to.

Now to turkey, that's some utter BS. I swear that some of you just log in and don't think through what you type up. Plenty of idiots are deriding the new Tacoma too and find it just as ridiculous. I've seen ugly and while this tester looks awkward, there are plenty of photos of it which don't look like this. Give it a rest and wait till it's official. Or take a peek at the new international spec Rangers, to give you idea which isn't really different from this USDM-spec Tooling Trial prototype build.

As for our other models? You are full of it, I'd figure LOL.

Ford World Headquarters Executive Design Approval of 2021MY P702 1:1 Clay Exterior - 11/17/2017


Our F-150 (P702), even on the day we approved this design in our courtyard in these very photos on November 17, 2017 (above), looked beautiful as can be and Toyota ironically who were finalizing the XK70 Tundra themselves at the same time as us, had to have been kidding themselves with that.

CALTY 2017 780B Program Exterior Clay Modelling


I think it's a cool truck regardless, even if too bold, but I can see why so many people are polarized by the Tundra.



You cannot say the same for our P702 F-150, which was deliberately made more vanilla than the previous P552 (MY2015-2020), which was much more bold and a design created in 2011 (modified in late 2015 for midcycle '18-20 MCA), yet still timeless today.



I say this as I'm working on teams for the next generation P736 and P800 Lightning...

Thank you, we own one (blue) in Brighton, Melbourne, which belongs to my spouse (owns that house there, I don't). It actually was stolen on New Year's morning after our house party (by some asshat guests) and the Brighton police ended up recovering it some 40 minutes away, in another jurisdiction within a different Melbourne suburb. They trashed the interior and left many cig burns on the Recaro seats, armrests and carpet. Unfortunately, I had left that morning back to Detroit via LAX connection from Melbourne on Jan 2, but saw the crime scene pictures from the PD and my spouse. Made use of my Everest instead, to commute from Brighton to Campbellfield.

I went with the SUV variant, 2023MY Everest Sport 3.0 V6 turbodiesel in the matching color as our Raptor. From the little time I had with it over the holidays, it is much more interesting than a 4Runner and I'd have it any day over that, save for a manual in the 4R. I'm truly proud of the work the P703 Ranger and U704 Everest teams did on these 2 vehicles over the last 7 years, but the latter won't be coming to the States when you have the Bronco (U725). My other older Everest XLT 2.2 (U375) in West Africa, is a bit more basic and manual transmission, the previous generation. I own a lot of Fords and Toyotas alongside luxury brands, but nothing GM nor "Chrysler" personally, even if I like the character of some of their products. I try to have no favorites, as long as I like product itself at the end of the day. GM has its strengths, but Ford and Toyota have absolute global appeal. Sad he we struggle in so many international markets, but I don't want to get into internal corporate politics on a Toyota forum and air out dirty laundry.

I understand this is a Toyota forum, but you don't have to be a Ford guy to appreciate a decent truck. I'm a Ford guy and went home from the hospital in a British (German) Ford Granada (Merkur Scorpio), plus work for the company now. I also own many Toyotas globally and happily share the future of many Toyota truck nameplates, just I've done so with Fords on other forums and daily encounters with enthusiasts. In fact, I comment more on Toyotas because of my NDAs at Ford. Some people actually think I still work for Toyota, like I briefly did in the distant past. That is how objective I am, but other people often can't bring themselves to that level of neutrality, even when there's no paycheck involved like my case.

Exactly, my man. This is absolutely golden. I left a Lexus forum I used to go to for years (and help share insight like I do here), when the 2021 Bronco debuted on July 13, 2020 and after some members I greatly, greatly respected (for years 1000x over) couldn't attack it based on appearance as a 5G 4Runner owner, they chose to attack it on partisan expectation it will be a failure, simply because it's a Ford and not a Toyota. One fellow engineer (forum member) there, also made it their business to egg on bad faith discussion and mention how a naturally aspirated 6.2L first gen Raptor (P415) struggling to get up Mt. Everest to a 70-Series, when it wasn't designed for that climate in the first place. It was designed for high speed desert running in the desert Southwest USA. I own MANY F-150 Raptors. A high mileage a 2011 6.2 Super Cab (bought used), with over 200k on it, a 2014 SuperCrew with a Whipple S/C (bought used), 2019 802A SCrew, and now a 2021 Gen 3 Ecoboost SuperCrew (plus my partner's RR). They have little issues, especially that we are rough with our trucks and keep in both Texas and Michigan. My Tacoma sees the least action.

Anyway, factoring in my 2011, I considered the premature attacks to be petty BS (seeing as what happened with 2022 Tundra hiccups later), which I had it up to here with and no longer saw that crowd there as the objective enthusiasts, whom I had posted with over the years on the greatest of terms about not just Lexus and Toyota, but other vehicles neutrally (except Acura LOL). It became a polarizingly partisan circle jerk full of snarky digs towards anything non-Toyota, so I left and chose not to fight back citing Toyota and Lexus' own failures, as a Ford professional. Particularly with the Tundra and not Tacoma. I chose to be diplomatic, unlike them and not go there, when Lexus failed to do so many things all of us had hoped for either. My spouse worked on that Bronco and I was proud of it, finally going public, only to see that rain down on my enthusiasm.

What I see here on TW at times almost drives me in that direction, because truth be told, shit-talking my employer without being able to cite the hard facts to back it up their attacks, feels like I am being baited to defend a multi-billion dollar Fortune 500 company who would rather me keep silent as a middle management employee, than be their sole voice and not senior marketing executive personnel in that scenario. I tolerate it more, because I understand that the environment here is different and over there it was like a cotton candy land, until that point. No one ever argued there and discourse was like being in the priesthood, for it to go south so quickly. If TW was like a convent that turned into a strip club overnight, it feel would similar to how I felt.

That's not the issue here. Your opinion a Ford truck is not your cup of tea, is definitely your right in my opinion as a Ford employee. It really is an issue, when you turn into an irrational hate fest. I don't think I've seen you do that, but definitely some other dudes have in this thread and it's childish. In my shoes, if someone wants to badmouth Ford and become extremely loud about it, especially a vehicle my spouse worked on as a senior engineer with lead responsibilities for this exact vehicle here in Michigan and Australia, then yeah I will take it personal somewhat and leave a forum if it gains too much acclaim (like 90% in favor). At that point, I am dealing with a partisan atmosphere and no longer one where folks can have their preferences, without being overly opinionated.

I am not sure if you are referring to the Yuma frame Ranger, which was manufactured in 3 different generations from 1982 to 2011 or if you mean the T6 Ranger (P375), developed in Australia originally from 2006 to 2011. That latter Ranger (P375) was designed to have softer, carlike curves, as that's what the international market favored. This is the original my predecessors' designed in Toorak, Australia from 2006 to 2008 and later put into production in August 2011 in Thailand and South Africa.

They don't need their trucks to look mucho macho and blocky, like Americans and Mexicans often prefer. Australians weren't too pleased with this blockier new P703 design, when it leaked in 2019 (clay mockup photos), because their tastes are different. They don't like blocky styling in general, but they did eventually fall in love with the new P703 for 2022.


The first version from 2011 is above, which gradually became what is sold in American showrooms currently and federalized at last minute for USA under the tenure of Mark Fields as Ford CEO, when he needed to justify the Bronco in a US factory and also get marketshare against GM's 2014 return to the midsize truck segment, during the last update to this generation for global markets. P375 aka T6 Ranger was never designed for the USA originally and meant for Australia, Oceania, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Under our past CEO Alan Mullally (2006-2014), who saved Ford from bankruptcy and presided over development of this Ranger, he adamantly refused for it to be sold and marketed in the United States, even after killing off the original Ranger and shuttering our original Ranger Twin Cities plant in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2011.

The annoying thing is, so many Americans fought and complained over not having the choice to buy this truck back in the early-mid 2010s, while rich Mexicans could and often drove over the border with Chihuahua or Baja California plates in those early examples and refresh 2015-18 versions.



Well, I find it ridiculous how a decade later, it's been here since 2019 as the P375N and so many people trash talk these P375N Rangers and show the grass isn't so green on the other side, seeing as the rest of the world doesn't get the F-Series and only the Ranger, yet love it for what it is. VW didn't even bother with the Amarok for America, as they'll ask for it here, then hate on it once it comes LOL and not buy it at all.

The Maverick (P758) was designed off of this P703 truck anyway, because the Ranger design you see in the photos was being ironed out in late 2018, before it reached this stage of design review for formal approval in January 2019 below.

So, no the Ranger came first and just took longer to engineer. The design approval occurred that early, because the truck was originally due in Q4 2021. Due to COVID, launch got delayed across the board significantly in all markets into 2022 and 2023 (USDM).

Toyota luckily has managed the Tacoma 920B program delays much better, just like the 780B Tundra program from 2019 to 2021. Tundra post-COVID only slipped with the hybrid versions, while Tacoma got delayed some 4 months. P702 F-150 got delayed about half a year, in 2020 while the U725 Bronco was miserably late shifting full launch in January 2021 to becoming scattered across Summer 2021 and reservations backlogged to present 2023, and the P703/N Ranger deathly late to market by many months. However, Toyota was behind on the Tundra even before COVID and will launch the new Tacoma, 17 months behind schedule (pre-2019 internal projections for MY 2023).

In short, the Maverick is inspired by the larger new P703 Ranger, which took inspiration from the F-Series line and is an homage to this 1982 original.

Saying, "that doesn't look good to me" is nothing of issue at all. It's just an opinion, but that isn't what always happens on TW and I think some of us are referring to that kind of behavior.

Once again, thank you. We need more of your kind on TW, because I'm a Toyota guy by vehicle ownership and a Ford guy by both profession and ownership.

That is not the issue here, at least for me. It is the obvious over the top hate fest, I often come across on here that takes it behind general observation and simple subjective opinion, which everyone is entitled to with our tastes. It is not a fact any of our Ford trucks are ugly, so I'm sure that can be better expressed as an opinion and not a fact like some people here tend to do.

I unfortunately have to admit, the inspiration for every truck in the midsize segment, was the 2nd and 3rd generation Tacoma and Hilux as well, dependent on launch date though. The 2012 Ranger (P375) studied the 2nd gen, 31xx GM cousins did as well, H61P Frontier (2022) the 3rd gen, and D23 Navara borrowed from the 2nd generation truck. I could name many more. Anyone want to argue with me on that, be my guest.

If not, check out their respective preceding generations from the 2000s and you'll see what I am talking about. They looked different and more original. Toyota defined the zeitgeist of this segment, no joke. I can't tell you how many "looks like a Frontier", "looks like a Colorado" comments on the new 2024 Tacoma I keep seeing and they ignorantly don't realize, the 2005-2015 model year Tacoma and the 2005-2015 Hilux, set the template to follow going forward design wise.

Evolving your own design, doesn't make for being a copy of your not so original competition. Forgive me for that Ford gods.

Really, are you sure it wasn't this one in 1993?



When the 1994 Ram debuted at the Detroit Auto Show on January 5, 1993 and launched in showrooms October 1, 1993, it changed pickups forever.

Trucks became over the top and even though I was a kid back then, I learned from alumni as adult here at Ford, that the PHN131 Super Duty program was immediately ordered in 1993 upon seeing that truck, which Lee Iacocca himself made happen in the late 80s before he retired 4 days ahead of reveal.

They finished that PHN131 design by 1995 and it debuted as the Super Duty in 1998, whereas the PN96 F-150 curvy design for early '96 was too late to change and already dialed in for production. The next gen F-150 (P221) went blocky in 2003.

Okay then, I love mine just fine and feel we did a great job with it, under 3 different CEOs.

Thank you for being fair here, as it's uncomfortable to come across anti-Ford posts, which are not from objective fact. My spouse worked on this program, Bronco, and Everest across both Michigan and Australia, particularly when we first met each other in England.

That's exactly what I have, 2022 Badlands 2-door 2.3L 7MT Sasquatch. That's my main commuter manual to Dearborn or my Raptor (auto of course).

 

I miss the old ways, one of my favorite looking small body trucks. Love the Tacoma flare side editions too

 

When Dodge debuted the '94, I was in love with that truck...which now that I think about it, might have been the start of my efforts to live a life without bias. My dad is a 1960's Chevrolet guy through and through. If it doesn't have a bowtie on it, he won't even acknowledge it. I grew up having to be a closeted Dodge fan, biding my time until I was 16 and could buy a Dodge Ram (which my dad said would have to be parked in someone else's driveway...and he wasn't kidding)

The truck I'm referring to is the next generation, the 2002. The proportions of this truck where significantly more bulbous than the previous. It might not have been as grounbreaking as the '94, but in my opinion, it upped the anti on the big truck era.



You got any of them jobs over there at Ford? My resume is below:

15+ Years in the Oil & Gas Industry as an Analyzer Project Engineer
Project Management Skills
Skilled in AutoCAD
blah
blah
blah
Proud owner of this 1965 Mustang Fastback, 289 based 331 w/ Paxton Novi 1200. Toploader 4-spd.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

 

Well Toyota is last to put decent power in a 1/4 truck. What did they do first?

 

You didn't like the 4.0 V6?

 

I think the new Ranger looks sharp. It’s not for me, but Ford harmonizing the design language between the Ranger, F150, and Maverick is a good move.

 

It was a fine motor, just not impressive from an acceleration standpoint. And yes I know trucks aren’t not purchased for their 0-60 times. But it’s nice to be able to mash the pedal and take off if you feel like it.

 

Almost nothing on the roads is impressive from an acceleration standpoint until you get into sportscars. It's why I've never understood people complaining about acceleration in a daily driver. It doesn't matter, as long as you can get up to speed on highway on-ramps, you're good to go.

If you want to have fun, I suggest people rent something for a day at your nearest track and actually feel what it's like to accelerate, brake, and corner at the full limits of the vehicle, without any worries about other drivers on public roads. It completely makes caring about how "fast" a stock pickup truck, sedan, or SUV is a moot point, because they are not even in the same order of magnitude in terms of performance, and nothing that you can legally do on the roads is 1/10 the fun that you can have on a track IMO. It's like knocking a Prius for not being capable off road. It's not what it's for.

 

Gospel truth.

I've never understood people on this forum ragging on the 3.5L. It's not fast, but its plenty for what it is. This is coming from a guy with a 600hp toy, so I know what it feels like to have a fast car. I just don't need that out of my truck.